Rachel Alexander – If he wins the election, the only satisfaction we’ll get is when he fails to give 95% of voters a tax break, and raises taxes on those making as little as $42,000, as McCain has predicted. Then we’ll vote him out of office after one term, just like the voters did with George H.W. Bush for failing to keep his promise regarding not raising taxes.

Obama won on style, but McCain won on substance.

In last night’s third presidential debate, Obama won on style, but McCain won on substance. Obama championed his promise that he would give 95% of working families tax cuts – in addition to an extension of the Bush tax cuts. Currently facing the biggest deficit in history, over half a trillion dollars, and considering that 38% of working families currently pay no income taxes, this promise is a bald-faced lie. Unfortunately, most Americans don’t have the time to do the research to figure this out. A debate format is not a conducive environment for explaining complex economic issues, which tends to hurt Republicans. It’s easy to trump the Democrat platform in a couple of soundbites, „We’re going to give you x,y, and z.“ It takes quite a few more sentences to explain why it’s not possible to play Santa Claus with others‘ money.

Obama has been labeled the most liberal Senator in the U.S. Senate by National Journal. The amount of spending he is promising is going to make Bush look like a fiscal conservative. Obama criticized McCain for voting for four of Bush’s five budgets, and said a McCain administration would give us „eight more years of the same thing.“ It was incredulous to hear him turn this around. Obama voted against those budgets because he wanted budgets that would have spent even more money, not the other way around.

If conservative policies are so bad, then why is Obama touting an astronomical level of tax cuts, a Republican solution? Apparently even the Democrats admit that when liberal policies like runaway spending get us into fiscal crises, it takes conservative policies to get us out.

The winner of the evening was „Joe the plumber,“ a small businessman McCain talked about who had spoken with Obama about how his tax hikes would affect him. Obama could not deny this.

McCain confronted Obama about the wasteful earmarks he had obtained as a Senator. Instead of acknowledging that earmarks contribute to our massive budget debt, Obama minimized them, saying that they only account for a small percentage of the budget.

McCain did a great job of confronting Obama about his association with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Obama was forced to discuss his relationship with the man who bombed the U.S. Capitol and Pentagon. Obama tried to minimize it, but didn’t deny it.

When McCain asked Obama whether he would punish people who chose not to purchase healthcare insurance, Obama ducked the question, saying that he would exempt small businesses from providing healthcare for their employees. He never answered whether folks in their 20’s who make a conscious decision to avoid buying healthcare insurance while healthy would be exempt. He kept emphasizing that employers are responsible for healthcare, but never explained why. It would be a lot cheaper for everyone if we could choose our healthcare program piece by piece through the private market, just like we choose car insurance or home insurance, instead of forcing us to go with the limited one-size-supposedly-fits-all options our employers offer.

The candidates were asked about how they would reduce dependence on foreign oil. McCain emphasized offshore drilling. Obama said he would give tax breaks to U.S. auto companies in order to keep jobs in the U.S. This didn’t make much sense, considering the economy has become so international, foreign auto companies like Honda have plants in the U.S. and U.S. auto companies similarly have parts made overseas. More symbolism than substance.

The last topic of the debate was abortion. McCain pointed out that Obama is so liberal that he voted against a ban on partial-birth abortion in the Illinois Senate. Even Congress was able to agree and pass a ban on partial-birth abortion. Obama claimed that the bill didn’t have an exception for the health of the mother. McCain retorted that the „health of the mother“ is a ruse that can be used to justify almost anything, it’s broader than „to protect the life of the mother.“ Obama showed his immaturity at losing that argument and swore, which was bleeped out on TV.

The best part of the debate came at the end, when McCain in a Freudian slip referred to Obama as „Senator Government“ instead of Senator Obama.

Because Obama was so slick during the debate, to the average ill-informed voter he probably came across the winner. If he wins the election, the only satisfaction we’ll get is when he fails to give 95% of voters a tax break, and raises taxes on those making as little as $42,000, as McCain has predicted. Then we’ll vote him out of office after one term, just like the voters did with George H.W. Bush for failing to keep his promise regarding not raising taxes.

Rachel Alexander ist praktizierende Anwältin für die Regierung in Phönix im U.S. Staat Arizona. Als ehemaliges Redaktionsmitglied und Kolumnistin des Arizona Daily Wildcat, gewann sie für ihre journalistischen Arbeiten drei Auszeichnungen und schreibt Kolumnen für IntellectualConservative.com und Nachrichten Heute.

Jeff Huber – Those poor kids at the Pentagon. They receive more funding than the rest of the world’s military establishments combined, but it’s just not enough. Pentagon officials have prepared a new defense spending estimate—one they plan to spring on us just before young Mr. Bush slinks out of office—that projects a requirement for $450 billion more over the next five years than previously announced.

Whoa, you might be thinking. We already spend well over a half trillion a year on defense, and what do we get in return? The Pentagon did such a lousy job defending the homeland on 9/11 that we had to buy a whole separate agency to take that job over, and only neocons and other lunatics would say our military is protecting our national interests overseas.

You ignorant bedwetting liberal. Don’t you see? The half trillion plus a year only buys you history’s best equipped, best trained military and a few wars for them to fight in. If you want your armed forces to do what you pay them to do, that will cost extra.

Battle Budget Galactica
It’s hard to tell exactly how much everybody spends on defense. America’s fiscal year 2008 defense budget request was $623 billion. The Chinese, the nearest thing we have to a peer military competitor, say they spend about $25 billion a year on defense, roughly four percent of what we spend. The American warmongery, ever eager to create scary phantasms, claims that China spends a lot more on defense than it admits to. Critics of the Pentagon say they Chinese can’t possibly lie more about their defense spending than we do. Our official defense budget doesn’t include things like defense related spending by other departments, the Homeland Security budget, some veterans‘ care expenses, the ubiquitous „supplemental allotments“ that never make it into the regular budget but always get through Congress, the ultra secret „black“ budget, and other hush-and-slush funding.

Some say the Chinese spend up to three times on defense what they claim to spend. If so, they’re still spending a half-trillion a year less than our official budget. Many claim that we spend twice as much on defense as the official budget total. If that’s true, we’re spending over a trillion dollars a year more than three times what the Chinese say they spend. Either way we’re spending a bunch load more money on defense than the Chinese are. Half a trillion dollars a year will buy you very many $400 toilet seats. A trillion will buy you twice that amount.

Much of what China spends on defense goes to update its arsenal. Admiral Tim Keating, head of U.S. Pacific Command, says the Chinese admit to being „25 years behind us.“ I say that’s another thing the Chinese are fudging facts about. The majority of their combat jets are J-7s and J-8s, fighters copied from the Soviet Mig-21 that first flew more than a half century ago.

However much the Chinese are lying about their defense spending, Russia spends somewhat less than they do, and however much we’re lying, Iran’s defense spending is less than one percent of ours and only about 70 percent of Mexico’s, and those evildoing terrorists could hide their defense budget under a tic egg.

So at this point in the New American Century, whatever two-war strategy we’re arming ourselves to fight must involve simultaneous conflicts with the Klingons and the Borg.

Force Plan 9 From Outer Space
As best we can tell, the 2009 defense budget only carries $520 million for space weapons research, which sounds like a trifling amount until you consider that we’ve signed on to a treaty that prohibit putting weapons in space. Don’t feel too bad for space though; the Pentagon isn’t neglecting it. In fact, the U.S. military is so heavily invested in space that it cannot navigate, communicate or hit a target without it. Without space, esoteric air breathing systems like the ultra stealthy, $2 billion a pop B-2 strategic bomber would be, well, worthless. Read all at Larisa`s At-Largely

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) was operations officer of a naval air wing and an aircraft carrier, and he commanded an E-2C Hawkeye aircraft squadron. His satires and analyses of military and foreign policy affairs have appeared in Proceedings, The Navy, Jane’s Fighting Ships, and other print periodicals. Some of his essays have been required student reading at the U.S. Naval War College, where he received a master’s degree in national security studies in 1995.